Ethical issues in moral and social enhancement

3.5. 
The importance of moral reasons 
Harris (2012) has argued that in order for a given intervention to be considered a 
moral enhancement understood as making morally better agents it is not sufficient 
that a morally better outcome is achieved. Rather, behavioural change must be 
achieved for moral reasons. Decisions regarding morally relevant matters can be 
made for a number of reasons, including self-interest, aesthetic preferences and so 
on. It might just so happen that a decision about a morally relevant matter was 
reached for non-moral reasons, but is consistent with an all-things-considered 
morally motivated decision, should such a decision have been made.
Consider the following case. After a successful job interview for a company that is 
known for its engagement with a local community, Derek is walking down the 
street with a prospective boss. They are approached by a man who explains that he 
is homeless and asks them to buy him some food. There is no particular reason to 
doubt this man’s story. Normally Derek would have politely declined and continued 
walking, reminding himself that he gives enough money to charity to feel that ‘he 
did his bit,’ that there are charities that provide food to those who need it, which in 
his view discharges his 
prima facie
obligation to help at little cost to oneself. The 
presence of his employer makes him stop and think ‘if I decline, this would make a 
bad impression on my boss.’ Based on the negative consequences for his reputation, 
he decides to buy lunch for the man. As John Harris has put it, the fact that one is 
doing good does not mean it is specifically moral behaviour; it is simply morally 
relevant. Although there might be problems (which we will shortly address) with a 
robust practical application of the distinction between, on the one hand, deciding to 
do what is conducive to morally best outcomes and, on the other, doing what is 
morally best for moral reasons, the basic point stands. The point that for an action 
to count as moral action (whether it is a right or wrong action) it has to be done for 
the right kind of reasons, can be made within broadly consequentialist framework 
such as Harris,’ from deontological perspective and in the context of virtue ethics.
Harris takes the argument further and offers a case against MB. Harris does not 
object to a biomedical intervention that, for example, mitigates xenophobia by 
enhancing general cognition, thereby reducing the tendency to hold false 
stereotypic beliefs. He puts such interventions in the same unproblematic category 

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as ‘bringing up children to know the difference between right and wrong’ or 
‘general education, including self-education, wide reading and engagement with the 
world’ (Harris, 2011, p. 104). However, he argues that MB using methods that 
affect emotions directly is not morally desirable if done with bettering moral 
agency in mind. What he objects to is the attempt to enhance morality via the direct 
biomedical modulation of emotions (Douglas, 2008) – that is, without the 
intermediate step of increasing the accuracy of cognitive processes (such as 
reasoning) or cognitive states (like beliefs) (Harris, 2011). 
Firstly, the point made here might (again) be that for a MB to genuinely count as 
enhancement of moral agency, it is not sufficient that we end up with people who 
simply act in a way that is conducive to morally best outcomes. They also have to 
do it for the right sort of reasons – that is, moral reasons. Direct biomedical emotion 
modulation as proposed by Douglas (2008) and Persson and Savulescu (2008) 
might be seen here not as moral enhancement (in the sense of making better moral 
agents) but rather as bypassing morality altogether. In so far as that is accepted to 
be correct, this might suggest one argument against the ethical desirability of MB’: 
the concern that pursuing moral improvement through direct emotion modulation 
might in fact cause moral decline and thus is morally undesirable.
Troubling as this concern might be, I would like to question both that such direct 
biomedical modulation of emotions necessarily falls outside the realm of moral 
enhancement (understood as making morally better agents), as well as the 
connected claim that MB is morally undesirable. However, those arguments will 
have to wait until the last chapter of this thesis, in which I will argue that voluntary 
MB, embedded in appropriate reflection, can constitute bettering of moral agency 
(and so moral enhancement according to the definition of many commentators) also 
within a perspective that acknowledges the importance of moral deliberation and 
all-things-considered judgement from a moral stance. Before this argument, 
however, I will examine three objections to MB: relating to moral disagreement, 
medicalization and narrative identity.